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April 26 (UPI) -- After almost four years of what NASA calls a "pragmatic concept study," scientists are ready to publicly present the agency's plan for a return to the edge of the solar system. In recent years, NASA has launched a number of missions aiming at studying the sun and its many mysterious phenomena.
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With a new proposed new mission, headlined by the Interstellar Probe, planetary scientists are turning their attention in the opposite direction, homing their sights in on the region of space where the sun's influence finally fades, giving way to what's called the local interstellar medium, or LISM.
If the Interstellar Probe is successfully launched, it will be the first tasked specifically with studying the formation and evolution of the heliosphere. But it won't be the first to reach interstellar space.
"There are truly outstanding science opportunities that span heliophysics, planetary science, and astrophysics," Elena Provornikova, the Interstellar Probe heliophysics lead from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab in Maryland, said in a press release.
On Monday, Provornikova and some of her partners at Hopkins presented the mission's scientific potential to virtual attendees of this week's European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2021.
Scientists cheered when Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 became the first spacecraft -- in 2012 and 2018, respectively -- to reach the hydrogen wall at the edge of the heliosphere and enter interstellar space.
Unfortunately, the Voyager trips have offered limited insights into the mysteries of the solar system's outer realm.
The trip to edge of the solar system is a long one -- the duo are currently hundreds of millions of miles and counting from Earth.
By the time the two Voyager probes reached interstellar space, the instrument technology they carried were several decades old.
For the last three-plus years, dozens of scientists have been considering the bounty of LISM data that a spacecraft could collect with the proper suite of instruments.
According to Provornikova, the Interstellar Probe and its instruments will help scientists more precisely map the shape of the bubble that is the heliosphere. The mission will also help planetary scientists study the interactions between solar particles and the local interstellar medium.
"The LISM is a completely new area for exploration and discovery," researchers wrote in a summary of the mission-in-planning.
"We have a crude understanding of the LISM inferred from in-situ measurements inside the heliosphere of interstellar helium, pick-up-ions, ENAs, remote observations of solar backscattered Lyman-alpha emission and absorption line spectroscopy in the lines of sight of stars."
"We have no in-situ measurements of most LISM properties, [such as] ionization, plasma and neutral gas, magnetic field, composition, dust, and scales of possible inhomogeneities," the authors of the concept study added.
Most planetary science focuses on the movement of the solar system's bodies in relation to the sun, but the sun is also on the move -- its relationship with the surrounding cosmos is constantly changing.
Currently, the sun is positioned within the Local Interstellar Cloud, but scientists estimate the sun is moving toward the edge of the cloud and preparing to enter into a new region of interstellar space.
As the sun moves through the Milky Way, scientists suspect the shape and behavior of the heliosphere changes -- and the Interstellar Probe might offer insights into what those changes look like.
As Provornikova acknowledged in Monday's presentation, researchers are still working out what exactly the Interstellar Probe's scientific mission should entail.
"Our approach is to lay out the menu of what can be done in such a space mission," Provornikova said.
